


surely it's a dream

by straweleon



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Family Fluff, Forgiveness, Gen, Happy Ending, Joel Lives (The Last of Us), POV Abby, POV Ellie (The Last of Us), Time Travel Fix-It, abby and ellie talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28987719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straweleon/pseuds/straweleon
Summary: One night, Abby's watching over Lev on a boat on the coast of California. The next morning, she wakes up just outside of Jackson, Wyoming. Her friends are alive. Looks like some people do get second chances, and Abby takes it.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

Abby’s luck, she assumes, ended when she talked to the Fireflies in Santa Barbara. Since then, it’s been endless torture. Even after their escape- _Ellie,_ rescuing them, they still can’t catch a fucking break, they can’t find the Fireflies anymore, and Abby doesn’t fucking know why she keeps saying “they”. It’s _her_ right now, just her because Lev isn’t conscious yet.

Tonight, she’ll sleep. She’d docked the boat and now she’s just wasting time looking up at the sky. She’s got to go to sleep and see what she can do to get to Catalina island and find the Fireflies tomorrow.

* * *

She wakes up looking at a ceiling. Why is there a wooden ceiling if they’re on a boat, and- she’s in a sleeping bag? Did the Fireflies pick her and Lev up? She _knows_ this place though, and her head jerks to her left: Manny. Fucking Manny and Mel and Leah and Norah, they’re all asleep in these sleeping bags, and it’s the goddamn ski lodge.

She scrambles up, careful not to wake anyone. Why the hell is she being careful? New fucking dream, sure, but why does it feel so real? She’s herself again, for one: her hair’s back, her muscles are back, and she feels groggy, sure, but not beaten and tired. She looks around again, and the fire’s burning, and beyond that are the windows looking out at the snowy landscape.

How could she forget that Owen was up first that morning?

Owen. He’s just standing there, looking out the window without a care in the world. It’s different seeing a dead friend stand upright than it is to see them sleep. But after pulling herself up (which, she notes, is significantly easier now with her body that hasn’t been tortured) she looks over Manny and Mel’s sleeping bodies. The last she’d seen them, they were bloodied bodies, devoid of life and breath, but their chests are rising and falling, even in this dream. She wonders when it will turn into another nightmare.

She stands and walks over to Owen. What else can she do? How will his ghost haunt her this time, in this dream, set in a paradise and the site of one of her worst memories all at once? Owen looks back at her as she walks toward the window to stand beside him. She keeps her gaze forward, out the window and doesn’t say anything.

“Hey,” he says finally, and Abby knows that he’s trying to fill the silence. He’s looking at her now and he asks her, “what were you dreaming about?” Abby doesn’t know what to say.

Was it all a horrible nightmare that she has now stepped back into reality from? It couldn’t have been, dreams don’t last _months_ and she remembers every vivid detail of her months spent with the Rattlers, but even before that, all of her friends’ deaths.

But Owen’s standing right here. He’s not dead on the floor of the aquarium. Neither is Mel, and Manny doesn’t have his face shot out either. She goes along with his dream question. “Long, confusing story,” she tells him. “Were you gonna show me something?”

Owen sighs. “How’d you know?”

“The snow. That’s on your jacket. Let’s go,” she says, turning to grab her gear. She _knows_ what she’s going to see, she’s going to have to walk across a cliff (nothing, really in comparison to the sky bridge) and then she’s going to see Jackson, the big city with Joel fucking Miller inside of it. Or outside of it, she remembers that she’d found him outside of Jackson while running from a horde when he saved her.

She heads towards her gear and hears Owen’s “You’re not curious at all?” She ignores it and throws her gear on, still a bit sluggish but glad to be armed for the first time in months. Kind of for the first time in months, because time is fucked up and she stops.

Where’s Lev? If she’s here, where’s Lev? Why wasn’t Lev the first fucking thought that she had when she woke up? Holy _fucking_ shit, she’s okay, but she doesn’t know if Lev is okay. “If I’m here,” she says under her breath, “he’s with the seraphites, so he’s fine for now…”

“What’s that Abby?” Owen asks, in a voice low and quiet. Her mind clears and she shakes her head at him. She’ll get Lev, but first, she has to deal with Jackson and Joel Miller.

* * *

Owen helps her up the slope, and she knows what she’s going to see past the trees. Jackson just as she remembered it, a fucking city.

“We made it,” Owen says, walking up to the ledge. Abby’s eyes are stuck on the city, though, this is _happening_ but she’s not going to do it all over again.

“You’re really quiet, what’s gotten into you? What do you think?” Owen asks softly.

“It’s a city,” Abby says. She chooses her words carefully. “... Do you know anything about the place?”

Owen shrugs. “I saw an armed patrol go from town to an outpost over there-” he points and continues. “Few more outposts in between. They have electricity, guns.” He pauses again and looks at Abby. “It’s a lot of people.”

She takes a breath and thinks about her dad who she knows now wouldn’t want her to repeat everything. She thinks about everything she’s been through, everything she lost as a direct product of her revenge. She’s going to end the cycle, here and now, and fuck if whatever is happening isn’t confusing as hell but she’ll do it if only to get back to Seattle and get Lev and Yara.

“We can’t do this,” Abby says. “They have way too many numbers, it would be a suicide mission.”

“You serious? We’re gonna turn back and go to Seattle?” Owen asks.

“Yeah,” Abby says, crossing her arms. “Unless you've got some plan, then we go back. I thought that was what you wanted.”

Owen looks over the city, and mumbles something that Abby is pretty sure is a “yeah”. He looks down and asks, “What is going on with you today?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you’re quiet all morning, you’re barely looking me in the eye, and you don’t want to kill Joel because- because they’ve got a lot of people? You’ve been talking about this for years, Abs. I need to know what changed.” He sighs. “Sure, once I saw that, I was against going in there, but are you okay?”

Abby laughs. She hasn’t actually laughed like this since, hell, she’d been looking for the fireflies with Lev months ago. Months ahead, now. “Holy fuck Owen, you think I’m not okay because I _don’t_ want to torture a man to death and risk our group just for the chance to do it? Shit, I really was an asshole.”

“Did Mel tell you?” Owen asks. His voice is quiet.

Oh. He thinks that this is about that? Abby coughs. “About what?” Of course Mel hadn’t fucking told her, but she can’t tell Owen that she knows because he’s going to ask how and Abby isn’t even going to have an answer for that.

He studies Abby’s face for a moment. “She’s pregnant,” he says.

“Huh,” she replies, trying to keep it as simple as possible. “We’d better get back to Seattle, then.”

“Abby, I thought I was going to argue with you about cornering a patrol or something.” Owen looks so confused and Abby wants to try to explain it to him, but she wouldn’t believe her own words and she’s sure that Owen wouldn’t believe them either.

“I want him dead,” she lies; she doesn’t want him dead, and she doesn’t want to go through that again. “But not at any cost.” Those are Owen’s own words, she remembers, and they’d better work.

“We should head back to the lodge then,” Owen says. “We’re going to have to show this to everyone before they even think about leaving.” His voice drops when he says, “Thanks, Abby.”

The walk back to the ski lodge is quiet. Abby considers Owen’s thoughts. Does he think she’s crazy? Well: that’s gotta be a given, she’s sure that he _knows_ that she’s gone nuts. Especially when she walks over that cliff without a problem. No, there was definitely a problem, but certainly not as much of a problem as what she would have had in her pre-sky bridge life.

As they approach, the first thing Abby notices is that there’s a fucking _horse_ there at the ski lodge when they return. How long had they been gone? Maybe fifteen, no more than twenty minutes? Owen notices too, and he and Abby try to pull the garage door up as quickly as possible. Abby’s heart is racing as she equips her gun, there wasn’t supposed to be a fucking _horse_ outside. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

The door creaks way too loud when Abby opens it with Owen on her trail, and she stops for a moment to listen, then shakes her head in frustration. She runs up to where everyone’s asleep with her gun pointed at no one else in the room that she can tell. She looks over at Owen and he shrugs. Abby points to the door on the left and then herself. The right door, she points at and then Owen.

They start heading towards their respective doors and the one on the right swings open. Abby does a quick turnaround and points her gun at the girl in the doorway.

It’s _her._ Why does she always fucking show up?


	2. Chapter 2

She comes out of the door pointing a gun at Abby. Owen’s backed up and he’s got his pointed at her, and Abby’s got her gun up too, she’s pointed it in mere reflex at the sound already. Abby remembers that her name is Ellie, and she looks so different from when Abby last saw her.

“Hey, put the gun down,” Abby says. She drops her own. “Owen, you too.”

“What?”

“Trust me on this, Owen. I know her.” Abby’s starting to think that she’s made the wrong choice, dropping her weapon, but Owen does the same and Ellie is starting to lower hers as well.

“You remember?” Ellie asks. Abby nods, thankful that her plan is panning out.

Well: Abby’s plan of getting the fuck out before anyone else hears doesn’t pan out, because she doesn’t hear the movement on the other side of the room. Before she knows it, Manny’s voice rings out, saying “Hands up!” and Ellie’s gun hits the floor. Owen, and Abby after him, pick their dropped weapons up off the floor.

Abby doesn’t point hers at Ellie. She can’t antagonize her anymore, she knows now what that girl from Jackson is capable of. Owen, hesitantly, brings his gun up to Ellie.

“Manny, you don’t want to do this,” Abby says. “I know her, I can talk to her. We don’t want that whole city on top of us. Just let me handle it.”

“Fuck that, she comes in here with a gun, while we’re fucking sleeping, and you just want to talk to her? Abby, what the hell?” Manny’s got a point, but Abby knows better. They’re probably already past the point of talking, though. Leah and Nick are going for their guns. Nora’s shaking Mel and Jordan awake.

Owen tells Manny, “Keep it pointed. I’ll take her weapons off her, then we can see about Abby having a chat with her.”

Her hands have stayed in the air, but she does offer a few words in the form of “I sure fuckin’ hope I get that shit back.”

“You will,” Owen reassures her. She shrugs off her pack, and it falls to the floor. Owen picks it and her fallen handgun up. “Belt?” He asks. She groans and brings a hand down to a pistol strapped to her waist and drops it on the floor. Owen grabs it and moves it, the other handgun, and Ellie’s pack to the far end of the room.

“Let’s backpedal here,” Mel announces. “Abby, you said  _ city?” _

“Yeah. It’s huge. Which is why we can’t do shit to her, or keep her for too long, because they’re going to be on fucking top of us,” Abby says. “I can talk to her. I’m not trying to mess with that whole city over there.”

“The fuck is this, Abby?” Jordan asks. “You just expect us to… what, just let you walk into some room with her, talk to her alone?”

Didn’t Jordan fucking listen to her? Abby says, “Yeah, she’s not gonna say shit in front of everyone here. We need each other’s help. She’s not going to try anything again, and even if she does, she’s unarmed. I’ll be armed.”

Ellie rolls her eyes, opens her mouth. Closes it again, like she decided against saying whatever snark she had.

Nora speaks. “Abby’s the one running the program. I trust her enough not to ruin it. I’d let her do what she wants, she’ll take care of the problem if she needs to.”

“Of all of us, Abby’s not going to risk the mission,” Nick says. Abby’s sure that if he knew that she was against the mission entirely, he wouldn’t be defending her. But he is, and Manny and Mel are coming around, so she considers it some kind of win.

Abby’s walking to the door behind Ellie, getting ready to open it, when Owen calls out, “Let us know if anything goes wrong.” Abby nods, though she’s sure that nothing is going to really happen. It’s stupid for her to be so sure of such a thing, when the last time she saw Ellie, Ellie had forced her to fight, threatening Lev in the process. But then she had let Abby go. It can’t have been for nothing.

The atmosphere in the room is… tenuous, so Abby figures that she’d better get out before they change their minds. She opens the door behind Ellie, leads her through. Ellie’s got her hands by her side now, and Abby’s got a hand on her pistol.

“You do know that if you try anything, I’ll shoot, right?” Abby asks once the door behind her is closed. They’ve stepped into the hall outside, and are walking to the end of it because Abby’s sure that if her friends overhear this conversation, they’ll have even more questions than they already surely have.

Ellie shrugs. “I don’t know. You’ve been kind of, ah, pacifistic since the Rattlers. Which you remember, too, I guess. Because otherwise, you’d’ve already beat me to shit. Again.”

“What, you’re a couple of days out from Santa Barbara too, you go to sleep, wake up, and everyone’s alive again?” Abby asks. They’ve reached the end of the hall. Abby’s still holding on to her pistol, unsure of whether she should holster it or not. It looks like Ellie doesn’t much care anyway.

“Yeah. Basically,” Ellie says. She looks at Abby now, dead in her eyes. “You know, I thought that shit was some kind of fucking dream until I actually got here. No, apparently it’s fucking real, all of that shit did happen. I know because you’re here, you remember it too. But you need to get the fuck out of Wyoming. You might have gotten the drop on me, but my people will fucking kill all of you.”

Abby doesn’t break eye contact. “You know, I was just going to tell my group that we’re leaving.”

“You… were already planning on leaving?” Ellie asks. She tries to hide her surprise, but Abby notices how her mouth stays agape for a moment until she closes it, clenches her jaw. Her eyes go to the floor.

“I got a second chance, I know where that whole revenge thing goes now. I learned the lesson. Joel Miller, well. He deserves to die, but so do I. If he dies, it’s not just me that has to pay for that. It’s all my people. And… shit. I’m just not going to do that again,” Abby says. She’s acutely aware that she has talked too much.

“Fuck,” Ellie says. Her hands, Abby notes, are shaking. Just a bit, not to an extent where anyone a few more feet away would notice.

“If you need to fight me, then sure. But I don’t want to fight you. You should just go back to Jackson. I’m leaving either way. I need to get my people in Seattle.”

It takes a few seconds before Ellie breaks the silence. “I’m sorry.”

Abby’s brow furrows. What the fuck?

“I shouldn’t have threatened that kid on the boat,” Ellie continues. “That was fucked up, he wasn’t a part of it. And when I look back. I’m not completely sure that I wouldn’t have killed him if you hadn’t cooperated with me.”

Abby knows. She remembers that feeling in the water, unwilling to take a chance on Lev’s life, and even angry that the woman in front of her would hold a knife to the throat of an unconscious kid. Abby holsters her gun. “Yeah. While we’re talking, I just…” She tries to find the words. The floor looks nice. Fuck. She looks back up at Ellie. “I never should have come to Jackson.”

“... Jesus,” Ellie says. “This is so fucked up. I was trying to fucking kill you two days ago, and now we’re just standing here, talking. Which I wouldn’t fucking be doing if Joel wasn’t alive.”

Abby leans back against the wall. She looks up at the ceiling and she says, “Maybe the universe is rewarding you for ending the violence there, in Santa Barbara.”

“Your friends are alive now too, though,” Ellie points out.

Abby sees her dad. Fuck. Except he’s not dead on the floor of St. Mary’s Hospital. He’s got a sea otter in his arms. She remembers that he had saved the animal from starvation. She manages to say, “Yeah. You should get back to Jackson before they all get here. We’ll be back on our way to Seattle, believe me. I need to get back there… uh, for someone.”

“That scar kid?” Ellie asks.

“Yeah.”

“He’s a Scar, though. Won’t your guys… not like that?”

Abby brings her whole attention back to Ellie. Why the everloving fuck does she care? “We’re gonna go back to California to find the Fireflies. We’re… definitely not going through Santa Barbara, though.”

“Okay, well… could you get my pack for me? Can’t really go back without all my stuff,” Ellie says. Fuck. Abby forgot about that.

“Yeah, I got it,” Abby says. She heads back through the hallway.

“And Abby?” Ellie calls. “Thanks for not… fucking my life up again.”

“You, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd originally planned for 2 chapters of this... y'all are getting one more lol. i feel like i gotta write, like, a little epilogue to wrap this up. so! the fic technically ends here. but there is more coming. also. i have another tlou fic in the works. it'll be a bit longer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ellie's pov.  
> song - just breathe by pearl jam

_ Practiced all my sins, never gonna let me win, uh-huh _

_ Under everything, just another human being, uh-huh _

_ Yeah I don’t wanna hurt, there’s so much in this world to make me bleed _

_ Stay with me _

_ You’re all I see _

_ Did I say that I need you? _

_ Did I say that I want you? _

_ Oh, if I didn’t I’m a fool you see _

_ No one knows this more than me _

Ellie ends the song there and looks at Dina. The last time she saw Dina… fuck, she doesn’t want to think about that. This Dina has no fucking clue that Ellie left her and JJ, hell, she doesn’t even know about JJ yet. There’s so much that Dina doesn’t know, so Ellie just says, “Not an Ellie original, but… I thought it was nice enough to play.”

After a moment, Dina says, “You worry me sometimes.”

Heart hammering, scared (… maybe relieved?) that Dina might know everything, Ellie asks, “Yeah?”

“It’s like you changed somehow.” Dina smiles. “I’m betting that our kiss last night just made you into a whole new person, Ellie.”

Ellie laughs at that. The tension leaves her, and she pokes fun back at Dina. This is how the night after the dance was  _ supposed _ to play out. “The same kiss that you would rate a six?”

“Huh. Yeah, I think it would be a six. How did you know that?” Dina looks so fucking happy, and God, her smile. So fucking bright. It makes Ellie think about JJ.

“Lucky guess,” Ellie answers.

“Now I wanna know how you’d rate it,” Dina says, eyes bright like the first time she said it.

Ellie thinks about times that she’s kissed Dina. At the farmhouse, in Jackson for those couple of weeks, Seattle, and traveling to and from Seattle. In Eugene’s sex den. At the dance. Sure, at the time, Ellie would have rated their first kiss above the threshold of a one-to-ten rating scale. For now, she settles on, “Seven and a half.”

“That is… surprisingly reasonable,” Dina says. She grins. “Now I need to know why you gave it a seven and a half.”

“Nope. No, you don’t,” Ellie says.

It’s quiet after that. Ellie gets up from her chair and places her guitar against the wall before joining Dina, sitting on the edge of her bed. Ellie doesn’t know what to say now. She could tell Dina everything, how much she loves her, but no. Dina wouldn’t even get past Ellie being immune. And she’d probably laugh at Ellie for falling in love after one kiss. Which Ellie hadn’t, she remembers, she fell in love with Dina before the fucking kiss.

Dina breaks the silence. Ellie knew that it had to have been on Dina’s mind, but she still isn’t prepared to answer when she hears Dina ask “What happened this morning?”

Ellie sighs. Fuck. She had told Jesse some bullshit earlier, but she decides to tell Dina the truth. The half truth. Kind of. “I woke up and I got really, really scared that Joel… and Tommy, weren’t okay. I went to check it out. I met up with them at the lookout afterwards and came back here. I guess it was probably, uh, trauma or something that made me think that.”

“Well, we all have a ton of that,” Dina says. “I’m here for you, though, Ellie.”

“Yeah. I know.”

* * *

“Dina’s pregnant,” Ellie says.

“You’re taking that mighty well,” Joel remarks. “So… are you two… breakin’ up?”

Ah. Right, Joel doesn’t know. “No, no, it’s Jesse’s, it happened a long time ago, before Dina and I even got together. Dina wouldn’t…” Ellie trails off.

“Yep. Didn’t think she was that kind of girl either,” Joel says. Dina has come over and joined Joel and Ellie for movie night a couple of times in the past few weeks, Ellie knows that Joel likes her. “You’re stayin’ with Dina?”

“Yep. I get to be a mom.”

“Hm.” Joel sips his coffee. “I’m proud of you. That kid’s gonna have quite the family.”

“You’re gonna be a fucking part of it too, Joel. Make, like… a grandparents club with Jesse’s parents,” Ellie says.

Joel shifts. He puts his coffee down. “We family again?”

Again. Ellie considers that word, ‘again’. She says, “I don’t think we ever weren’t.”

Joel nods. It’s quiet for a second, the two standing there on the porch in silence. He looks Ellie dead in the eye. “Might wanna start workin’ on that mouth of yours, future parent.”

“Oh my fucking God, Joel,” Ellie laughs.

* * *

“Hey, Dina,” Ellie calls to her one night. She’s nine months along now, the kid’s going to be born soon, and Ellie has to get something off her chest.

“Yeah, babe?”

“I just want to promise you that I’m never going to leave you or this kid. I’m stuck like glue once this kid is born. You won’t be able to get rid of me,” Ellie chuckles.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dina says. “But I wouldn’t have chosen you to be a parent if I thought you’d leave.”

“Well… I just wanted to make sure you knew. I love you.”

* * *

Ellie has decided that JJ, at ten years old now, is old enough for one of her more… fun video games.

“I don’t know what to do here,” JJ says. Ellie chuckles, she’d had some difficulty figuring this one out herself the first time she’d ever played.

“So, you see those ledges over there?” Ellie asks. JJ nods. “You can jump over to them.”

“There’s no way he can make that jump, ma.”

“He’s Nathan fu- sorry- freaking Drake! Just try it for me, spud, I know what I’m saying,” Ellie tells him. Obediently, JJ controls the character on the screen. He makes the jump and grins. He looks just like his dad when he smiles.

An hour or so later, after many puzzles that JJ begged Ellie to help him with, he encounters his first real big group of bad guys. “There is no way I’ll be able to beat all of them, can I sneak around them?” JJ asks.

“Nope. You gotta go for all of them,” Ellie replies. “Try picking up that rifle over there and go in guns blazing.”

JJ does. And he’s doing okay, getting to cover when the screen goes grey, and making a few headshots. Ellie’s proud of him, first big boy video game.

There’s knocking at the door. Ellie nods to JJ to keep playing and stands up so she can head over to the door. She opens it, and there’s Jesse.

“Hey Jesse, what’s up?” Ellie asks.

“Are you letting my son play violent video games over there?” He asks, chuckling.

“He’s shot a real gun before, what harm does a digital gun make?” Ellie replies.

He shakes his head, smiles, and changes the subject. “Well, there’s someone- that just came in to Jackson- says she needs to talk to you specifically. Maria told me to let you know.”

Ellie furrows her eyebrows. She can’t think of anyone who’d come through the gates asking for her. “What’s her name?”

“Abby. She’s real nice, kind of strong looking, came alone. Says she knows you, wants to talk to you before Maria,” Jesse says.

“Oh. Yeah, I know her,” Ellie says. What the fuck? Abby.  _ Abby _ is fucking here in Jackson. Abby who, in some other universe, killed Joel and Jesse. And Jesse says she’s a nice person.  _ Fucking  _ Abby’s still got to be here to ruin some shit.

The walk to the gates isn’t long, especially when Ellie is going at as fast a pace as she is, fueled by her need to know what the fuck is going on and some deepset rage that hasn’t surfaced in a long fucking time.

When she gets there, Abby’s just sitting there, unarmed as far as Ellie can tell. Abby lifts her head and looks in Ellie’s direction as Ellie comes closer.

“What the fuck,” is all Ellie can say. Abby’s there. It’s been a fucking decade since the last time Ellie had seen Abby. Not much had really changed, though Ellie’s still standing there looking down at Abby’s sitting form and feeling anger that she thought she’d worked through.

“I need to talk to you,” Abby says.

Ellie nods. “Well, no one’s fucking around, so just say it.”

Abby scowls, but puts a more agreeable face back on quickly. “I found the Fireflies. We found a cure. I told them about this settlement in Wyoming, and they gave me a team, plus a shit ton of the vaccine. It’s yours if you want it.”

Ellie clears her throat, thinks back to what happened about fifteen years ago, where the cure was only possible in a world that she had to die for. Where she was willing to die for that cure, even if she didn’t know that she had to. And Abby of all people is sitting there, just offering it to her, seemingly out of kindness, or… regret?

“Yeah,” Ellie answers. Her throat’s dry. “Ma- Maria’s probably gonna want to hear this. Come on, we can go talk to her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright! so that's a wrap. first multi-chaptered fic, out of the way. i know it was technically still really short. i could've made this a one-shot. but i think it works this way. thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> remember to kudo if you liked! this was my first fic in this fandom. also if you want to comment, don't be shy! it makes us writers very happy.


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